Plagues
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Attention

Corona propaganda backfires on system: US Amazon workers want to go home and practice 'social distance'

Lauren Kaori Gurley
Vice
Mon, 20 Apr 2020 21:11 UTC

Comment: If online trade blinks out, they'll have to either end the lockdown or face mass rioting...


Amazon Worker
© Getty Image
More than 300 Amazon warehouse workers at 50 facilities across the country have pledged to call out of work in the coming days to protest Amazon's handling of the coronavirus — the largest mass action against the company since the start of the pandemic.

In recent days, Amazon has confirmed at least 75 coronavirus cases in more than half of its 110 warehouse facilities, and experts have warned that the number of positive cases is "likely to exponentially increase" in the coming days and months due to Amazon's failure to implement an effective national safety plan for its warehouses.

"I will be calling out sick tomorrow to protest because Amazon is not allowing us to stay home and practice real social distancing," Monica Moody, a 22-year-old packer at an Amazon Fulfillment center in Concord, North Carolina and a member of United For Respect, told Motherboard. "I have to go to work and risk being exposed to this virus. I need the money. If Amazon were offering it, I would use paid sick leave."

In a series of blog posts, Amazon has outlined an evolving series of benefits and policies for its workers during the pandemic, including a $2 an hour increase in wages and two weeks of paid sick leave for those who test positive for coronavirus. While they are not punishing workers for calling out sick, the paid leave policy does not extend beyond those workers with confirmed or suspected coronavirus cases. Organizers and experts say that public pressure and worker organizing has played an important role in pressuring Amazon to expand its protections and benefits for workers but that safety equipment, cleaning protocols, and paid leave options still remain short of what is needed to curb the spread of the virus in warehouses and the communities where Amazon workers live.
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Attention

Epidemics in history and the COVID-19 pandemic

Pepe Escobar
Asia Times
Fri, 17 Apr 2020 20:49 UTC
The plague-stricken town, traversed throughout with hierarchy, surveillance, observation, writing; the town immobilized by the functioning of an extensive power that bears in a distinct way over all individual bodies - this is the utopia of the perfectly governed city.

- Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish
Allegory of Bad Government
© Photo public domainAmbrogio Lorenzetti 's Allegory of Bad Government (1338), fresco in the town hall of Siena, Italy.
Predictably eyeing the Decline and Fall of the American Empire, a serious academic debate is raging around the working hypothesis of historian Kyle Harper, according to whom viruses and pandemics - especially the Justinian plague in the 6th century - led to the end of the Roman Empire.

Well, history actually teaches us that epidemics are more like revelatory moments than social transformers.

Patrick Boucheron, a crack historian and a professor at the esteemed College de France, offers a very interesting perspective. Incidentally, before the onset of Covid-19, he was about to start a seminar on the Black Death medieval plague.

Boucheron's view of Boccaccio's Decameron, written in 1350 and about young Florentine aristocrats who fled to the Tuscan countryside to tell stories, focuses on the plague's character as a "horrible beginning" that tears apart social liaisons, provokes a funerary panic and has everyone wallowing in anomie.

Then he draws a historical parallel with Thucydides writing about the Athens plague in the summer of 430 BC. Pushing it to the limit, we may venture that Western literature actually starts with a plague - described in Book 1 of the Iliad by Homer.

Thucydides' description of the Great Plague - actually typhoid fever - is a literary tour de force as well. In our current setting, that's more relevant than the "Thucydides trap" controversy - as it's idle to compare the context in ancient Athens with the current US-China hybrid war.

Both Socrates and Thucydides, incidentally, survived the plague. They were tough, and acquired immunity from their earlier exposure to typhoid. Pericles, the leading citizen of Athens, was not so lucky: he died at 66, a victim of the plague.
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Beaker

Best of the Web: The viral 'infodemic': Corona1984 is Fake News OVERLOAD

James Corbett
Corbett Report
Sat, 18 Apr 2020 19:18 UTC
Infodemic
© Corbett Report
It's silent. It's deadly. It's spreading all around the globe. And, if you're not careful, it'll get you next!

The viral pandemic? No, silly! The viral infodemic.

Haven't you heard? There's a tsunami of fake news that's coming to get you! And if you plebs don't behave properly then your rulers are just going to have to shut down the internet for your own good.

If you haven't heard the term "infodemic" yet, then lucky you. But trust me, you're going to be hearing about this idea ad nauseum in the coming months, so you better get prepared.

So what is an infodemic, exactly? Good question. Let's turn to everybody's favorite global health agency, the World Health Organization, for that answer, shall we?

On February 2nd they released a situation report on the novel coronavirus outbreak that had a section on "Managing the 2019-nCoV 'infodemic'." This report helpfully explains that an infodemic is "an over-abundance of information - some accurate and some not - that makes it hard for people to find trustworthy sources and reliable guidance when they need it."

Oh, no! Too much information? Say it ain't so! If only someone can save us from this terrible scourge of having to use our own brains and apply a little discernment to the information we encounter!
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Corona

Best of the Web: Coronavirus - Lies, damned lies and statistics

James Corbett
Corbett Report
Fri, 17 Apr 2020 18:18 UTC
Lies, Damned lies and Statistics
© PR Week
The numbers are in on the great Covid-19 pandemic . . . but unfortunately those numbers are unreliable. From mendacious models and puffed-up projections to dodgy death data and tainted tests, today on The Corbett Report James highlights what the accredited scientists and award-winning researchers are saying about the pandemic pandemonium of 2020.

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Comet 2

New Comet P/2020 G1 (Pimentel)

Ernesto Guido & Adriano Valvasori
Remanzacco Blogspot
Fri, 17 Apr 2020 18:11 UTC
CBET 4754 & MPEC 2020-H06, issued on 2020, April 17, announce the discovery of a comet (magnitude ~15) by Eduardo Pimentel on CCD images taken by Jacques, Pimentel, and J. Barros with a 0.28-m f/2.2 astrograph of the "Southern Observatory for Near Earth Research" (SONEAR) at Oliveira, Brazil. The new comet has been designated P/2020 G1 (Pimentel).

We performed follow-up measurements of this object while it was still on the PCCP webpage.

Stacking of 7 unfiltered exposures, 24 seconds each, obtained remotely on 2020, April 15.4 from Q62 (iTelescope network) through a 0.50-m f/6.8 astrograph + CCD + focal reducer, shows that this object is a comet with a compact coma about 15" in diameter and a tail 20" long in PA 90.

Our confirmation image (click on it for a bigger version)
Comet P/2020 G1 Pimentel
© Remanzacco Blogspot
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Attention

'Your papers, please' - Immunity certificates

Jon Rappoport
Jon Rappoport's Blog
Wed, 15 Apr 2020 19:19 UTC
"Your papers, please. You have none? You must go back into the dark."
Papers Please
© Pop Mythology
Once again, in this article, I step into the world of official gibberish about the epidemic and the virus and tests and so on. I point out the internal contradictions in the government position. And then I step back and look at what they're really up to, in the way of a covert operation.

Let's start with the official word on so-called immunity certificates.

POLITICIO, 4/10: "Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, revealed Friday the federal government is considering issuing Americans certificates of immunity from the coronavirus, as the Trump administration works to better identify those who have been infected and restart the U.S. economy in the coming weeks."

"The proposal is contingent upon the widespread deployment of antibody tests which the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration are in the process of validating in the U.S., Fauci said."

"Although coronavirus testing thus far has been able to determine if an individual has an active infection, antibody tests report whether an asymptomatic person was previously infected but has since recovered [and is immune], potentially allowing them to return to their jobs."

Now let's take that POLITICO article apart.
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Attention

President Xi impressed by Michigan governor's totalitarian policies


Babylon Bee
Tue, 14 Apr 2020 03:32 UTC
Xi Jinping and Gretchen
© Babylon Bee
Beijing — In a candid speech Tuesday, President Xi Jinping stated he was "pretty impressed" by Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer's handling of the coronavirus outbreak, specifically praising her totalitarian policies.

China's dictator said he was actually a little jealous he hadn't thought of some of her ideas himself.

"She has some pretty great ideas -- stopping people from gathering together even with their families, ordering people not to buy seeds -- they can't even plant their own food now! We hadn't even thought of some of these innovative approaches," the Communist president said. "We're always looking for more ways to oppress people, and we were really inspired by Whitmer's approach."
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Syringe

'DNA vaccine passport' of the Brave New World

Jon Rappoport
Jon Rappoport's Blog
Tue, 14 Apr 2020 19:17 UTC
COVID Vaccine
© REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/IllustrationA woman holds a small bottle labeled with a "Vaccine COVID-19" sticker and a medical syringe in this illustration taken April 10, 2020.
I have already written about the currency reset and other features of a technocratic future waiting in the wings. — New levels of visible surveillance, social credit scores, universal guaranteed income, Internet of Things, energy-use quotas, smart cities.

— Events can move in several directions, going forward. In this article, I explore one of those directions.

The occasion is this fake pandemic; the big hammer is the vaccine against the phony COVID.

As Fauci mentioned a couple of months ago, it could be a DNA vaccine — new technology — which means it is really gene therapy. Synthesized genes are injected into the body. They purportedly set up immunity. Actually, they PERMANENTLY alter the genetic makeup of the recipient.

As you can imagine, this creates the opportunity to put many different genes into humans. To try to invent "new humans."

The so-called immunity certificates Fauci is now talking about? They would be issued to people who test positive on the new antibody tests for COVID-19 — which is an interesting turnaround, because, since 1984, positive tests results have generally been taken to mean "infected." Why the shift?

Because there is a need for these immunity certificates — as an INTRO to condition the population to an IDEA.

If and when the COVID vaccine arrives, the certificates would be used to signify immunity for all those who take the shot.

It would function as a license. Your passport into the Brave New World. You're "immune," so you're allowed to move out of fear mode. And circulate and travel and enter schools...
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Blackbox

COVID19 restrictions hasn't improved air quality over Germany

P Gosselin
No Tricks Zone
Sat, 11 Apr 2020 21:37 UTC
The Corona crisis has reduced car traffic, yet air quality has not improved. This suggests that the automobile's role in air pollution has been vastly exaggerated.

Air Quality Over N Germany
© NASA
There are fewer cars on the road in major German cities due cities to the massive COVID-19 restrictions and "green zones", "and yet it apparently does not look as if this will significantly improve air quality," reports the online German Nordkurier here.

"Despite existing driving bans in large cities and the corona protection measures, nitrogen oxide pollution remains the same and is even increasing in some cases, according to the FDP in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania."

Environmentalists and climate activists like to claim that modern cars and industry have been polluting the air with dangerous particulate matter or nitrogen dioxide, but since restrictions were put in place 3 weeks ago, no improvement has been detected thus far.
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Gold Seal

Best of the Web: The flickering flames of freedom - A letter to the future

James Corbett
Corbett Report
Sat, 11 Apr 2020 19:05 UTC
"The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time."

— WWI conspirator Edward Grey
Letter to the Future
© Corbett Report
I do not write these words for my contemporaries. We are the damned. It is our lot now to watch as the lamp of liberty is extinguished, our burden to bear witness to the final flickering of the flame of freedom.

No, I don't write these words for my peers; I write them for those yet to come. The inhabitants of that future dystopia whose birth pangs we are experiencing. The remnant of once-free humanity who might — through some miracle I can't even imagine — come across this electronic message in a bottle.

I know that it's almost hopeless. That the chance of these words surviving the coming internet purge are slim at best. That even if — against all odds — this message does wash up on your digital shores, that the chance of these words being understood by you is even slimmer. Not because you don't understand English, but because you no longer use these words I'm writing: Freedom. Humanity. Individual.

Still, I am here to record the end of an era. So I will press on in the hope against hope that someone, somewhere in that future Digital Dark Age will have eyes to see and ears to hear.

The darkness is descending.

Let there be no mistake: We all know this.
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